ADO.NET Entity Framework: What. How. Why.

Posted By: Charles | Jul 19th, 2006 @ 11:35 AM

I recently caught up with some of the technical minds behind ADO.NET's Entity Framework: Architect Michael Pizzo, Technical Lead Pablo Castro and Director of Program Management Britt Johnston.

What's an Entity Framework, you ask? Well, watch and learn all about this new ADO.NET development framework/paradigm. For the ADO developers out there, you'll be quite pleased with the architectural direction ADO has taken.

Enjoy.

Here are some links to relelated ADO.NET information:

Pablo’s post with links to detailed docs: http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2006/07/11/662447.aspx

Screencast demo’ing ADO.NET vNext in action: http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2006/07/11/662454.aspx

ADO.NET team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/

Data Programmability team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/data/

Britt’s first blog post (recent) sharing his thoughts on conceptual schema: http://blogs.msdn.com/data/archive/2006/07/14/665780.aspx

MSDN Data Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/

Tags: ADO.NET, CSharp, Entity Framework, LINQ, Software Composability, SQL Server

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sparky

Me thinks it's annoying when people say cutesy crap like "me thinks". Take responsibility and credit for your own thoughts -- say them in the first person!

SilentBlob

Au contraire! Methinks is actually from formal Old English, it has been around since before Shakespearean times.

AlphaKahuna
Customers, THE valuable asset.

Me thinks the message of the video is not the phrase "me thinks"

ZapperGirl
http://sexy-technology-geeks.blogspot.com/

Charles
Welcome Change

OK... I've edited out "me thinks" so that you can concentrate on the meaning of the video...

Probably best to actually watch a video before you post in a video thread. That's the preferred methodology anyway.

C

PeterF
Early Adopter

Interesting stuff. Only thing that wasn't highlighted was when you actually change the database tables and how that is automatically handled.
I would expect a seperate XML file with these mappings which you could update if things would have been changed to a point that automatic handling fails...
Is there also another view for checking the mappings?

Peter

Charles
Welcome Change

AlphaKahuna wrote:

Me thinks the message of the video is not the phrase "me thinks"

Correct!

Cyonix
Me

Damn i want this now!

I wish you had gone into more detail as to how it works with the database. For example: do i have to create stored procedures that i then map using that map editor thingymebob

Or does it magically do all that for me Wink

Klaus Enevoldsen
Development has never been easier nor more complicated...

>Damn i want this now!

I believe that I heard somewhere that the first preview will be available some time in august. August is almost now...

davida242

This is majorly cool! Can't wait to get the bits.

Couple of questions:

1. Isn't this a complete superset of DLINQ? Is there anything DLINQ can do that you guys can't do? If that is true: Why have both? Generally, it would be nice to clear that up and let us know how this is going forward.

2. To follow up on the "is it debuggable" question. Is it testable? I.e. do you have a story for people that do TDD? Is there good support to replace these things with mocks etc? Would be great if these things would be taken into account from the start!

3. This is only minor, but still. What about refactoring? If I change a name in the mapping definition, will that change trickle via refactoring rename down into the places where I query in code?

Cool stuff! David